Data Visualization Final Project

Gian Mella

Topic Introduction

In this project, I used NBA data to create my visualizations. The dataset I pulled from lists every NBA player who played over 10 minutes per game in last year’s playoffs (2021-22 NBA season). This table shows a wide variety of data for each player, such as per game stats, shooting percentages, and some advanced statistics as well. There are 152 players in the dataset.

I chose this data mostly because I’m a big fan of basketball and also of Jimmy Butler. Butler had a great playoff run last year, and as a fan of his I wanted to use visualizations to see just how good he was last year. I compared his statistics to both the general field and also against the top players from last year’s playoffs.

My data comes from Stathead: https://stathead.com/tiny/hXqZ6.

Visualization 1

For arguably the 4 best players from last year’s playoffs, this visualization illustrates each player’s quartile rank in 5 different advanced metrics.

Visualization 2

Here we have a comparison between Jimmy Butler and the other 9 top PPG scorers from last year’s playoffs. For 6 different types of shot percentages, this plot shows his percentage in each one vs. what the average of the rest of the top 10 was.

Visualization 3

This visualization displays games played against win shares for the players in our dataset. Butler is highlighted on the graph.

Additional Information

For the first visualization, I wanted to communicate how advanced stats can give us an additional look into a player and show us things that the normal box scores might not be able to. I think it also highlights just how dominant Jimmy Butler was at every facet of the game in last year’s playoffs, being in the top quartile in every metric.

The second visualization really illustrates the efficiency of Jimmy Butler as well. He bested the average of the rest of the top 10 PPG leaders in every shot percentage category. Butler isn’t really known as a prolific scorer, but I think this graph shows his capabilities of being one when it matters most.

As we can see from the 3rd visualization, there is a general upward trend between games played and total win shares. Butler seems to have significantly higher win shares than everyone else, despite the fact that there are quite a few people who played more games than him. This plot showcases yet another display of Butler’s impressiveness in last year’s playoffs.